Arlette Gordon
The plot is about a trial against three men who tried to earn loads of money by illegal methods to get to Canada and about the lawyers and the judge who get on with the trial and who are being unfaithful to their couples.
On the day Jean Gabin dies, a kidnaper who also takes a fortune in jewels heisted from Cartiers murders Simon Verini's wife. (Simon was fencing the jewels for a youthful gang who robbed Cartiers; he suspects them of the murder.) He's framed for the theft and spends ten years in prison, writing to his daughter, Marie-Sophie, who's 11 when he's sent away. Released, he reconnects to Marie-Sophie and to the young thieves, seeks revenge, and is quickly arrested again. She doesn't know what to make of her father, retreats to her Swiss fiancé, and is flummoxed when one of the young thieves falls for her. Is resolution possible when crime cuts across families and romance?
A woman and three men. Nina, who's come to Paris to act and sleeps with any man at hand, meets Paulot, a young estate agent; he's smitten. She also meets Paulot's flatmate Quentin, a compulsive who stalks her. To Paulot's jealous dismay, she's willing to sleep with Quentin, and wants Paulot's friendship. After a desperate act by Quentin, Nina and Paulot share a flat, but she still won't take him as a lover; instead, her energy goes into a production of "Romeo and Juliet" directed by a detached, intense man who becomes her father figure. Quentin's ghost taunts her, Paulot wants to end all contact, and the director plans to return to London. The art of the theater may be her only refuge.
The movie starts with an interview with director Claude Lelouch. He pleads viewers not to disclose the plot of the movie after leaving the projection room. Even the movie's trailer shows only a long sequence of faces gazing speechlessly in space. "Like all my movies, this one is about a man and a woman", says Lelouch in the interview.
Gangster (Lino Ventura) with his accomplice (Charles Gérard), prepares to take part in the "first psychological hold-up in the history of crime". Next door to the jewellers of Van Cleef & Arpels, on the Croisette, in Cannes, the find the shop of a beautiful antiques dealer (Françoise Fabian) who befriends the group. The driver and the antiques dealer fall in love. He is friendly but unrefined, she is cultivated and independent, but discovers that talking with Simon shows up her vanity, and she desires a simple and clean love. The hold-up which had been planned for a long time by the driver is shown to be more sophisticated than his methods of seduction.
When they realize the times are changing, five crooks decide to switch from bank robberies to personality abductions.
A man returns to Rouen, after fifteen years in the United States, and feels like a stranger among old friends.
